Five Conversations Rose and the Doctor Had
by ArieSemir
Summary: And One They Didn't . Cohabitating a cozy house in Chelsea isn’t quite the same as cohabitating a TARDIS. As they adjust to an old/new Doctor, linear time and wallpaper, there are a few things Rose and the Doctor need to discuss. Rated for later chaps
1. Conversation 1

Five Conversations the Doctor and Rose Had (And One They Didn't)

Author: TravelerOfTheWays

Rating: G

Spoilers: Journey's End

Summary: Cohabitating a cozy house in Chelsea isn't quite the same as cohabitating a TARDIS. As they adjust to an old/new Doctor, linear time and wallpaper, there are a few things Rose and the Doctor need to discuss.

Conversation #1

Rose wanted to scream. She wanted to tear her hair out, tear _his_ hair out, and throw around some good china, preferably at his presently to-be plucked head. Nothing would please her more than to upend the table and send scalding tea pouring into his lap. Ruin those _ridiculous_ jimjams, the light blue ones with dancing monkeys clutching half-peeled bananas. When she was in a good mood, she loved that a grown man possessed the security to wear dancing monkeys to bed, but at times like these, she _despised_ them. They actually _matched_ a pair her little brother owned.

Instead of screaming, Rose forced her mouth into a tight smile as her fingers came dangerously close the crushing the handle of the mug she held. "Doctor, I am _not_ smuggling a Tradisian discombobulater out of the Torchwood vaults because you think you remember that it contains a circuit you could use in your sonic screwdriver!"

He just smiled back at her. He managed a better semblance of contentment than she did – shocking, considering his Donna heritage – but she could see that his knuckles were white around the handle of his own mug. It was yellow and matched the bananas. "I understand that you don't want another row with your boss, _dear_, but I need that discombobulater to reconstruct my sonic screwdriver. It's not like Torchwood has the least idea of how to use the thing."

Rose's nostrils flared, and she felt blood rushing to her face. "What, are you calling us stupid?!" A vase from Pete balanced on a nice stand in the adjoining kitchen caught her. It had been a house-warming gift. It would smash very well, she thought.

The Doctor's lips thinned, and he drew in a quick rush of breath. _Finally_, she thought. Finally they'd have it out. She'd been waiting for this, for their first big fight, but he'd always slipped out of them. Till now. She was sure they'd be screaming before ten.

Instead, he gritted his teeth and maintained his smile. She could tell he was gritting his teeth; his jaw jutted out a bit when he did. "Of course not, Rose. I'm the stupid one." He pushed himself jerkily to his feet and left the flood of golden summer light for the cool shadows of the kitchen.

Rose took a breath, then another. That almost sounded like an apology – but it was not an apology she wanted. She wanted a _fight_ from him. Not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of their relationship. God, she'd fought enough with him in his first two incarnations, especially the first. Hardly a week when by when she didn't find something to shout about, and he wasn't shy about shouting back. Her blue-eyed Doctor had been so shut-off then, trying to nurse the wounds of the Time War in private, and when she refused to let him cut himself off from her, he sometimes lashed out.

This was different, though. This Doctor, whom she privately thought of as her blue-suited Doctor, was born in battle, just as her brown-suited Doctor has said, but it wasn't rage or grief simmering beneath the surface. It was something else, and Rose was determined to tear through his excuses and find out what it was. But this Doctor was a lot of better at bottling it up than her first Doctor had been.

In a split second, she made her decision. The vase was too posh to go throwing about, but the dimestore mug in her hand was a different story. She grabbed it around the middle and heaved it to the cabinets just left of her Doctor's head. It hit with a satisfying crash that echoed through the kitchen and sent tea and shrapnel flying in all directions. The tea splashed his jams, not blue, and bits of mug ended up in his hair.

He made a noise that was almost a screech and jumped a foot in the area. When he had recovered, he spun around to face her, brown eyes wide with shock. "What was that?!" he shouted.

"That was _me_," Rose replied, just as loudly. "That was _me_ wishing you would stay around and _yell_, just this once! You haven't raised your voice since we stepped out of the TARDIS, and I think I'm going to go mad if I have to see that forced smile on your face one more time!"

He threw his hands up. "Rose, I love you! I'm not going to yell at you like your mother does at the dog." He took a deep breath and wiped gingerly at the damp spots on the dancing monkeys. "When you're ready to talk about this like an adult, I'll be in my study."

"Don't you dare, mister!" she shouted. "Take one more step, and the yellow mug gets it!" She realized as soon as it came out that the threat had sounded much more ominous and much less hilarious before she said it.

He stared at her. She stared back. She grabbed the yellow mug and raised her arm menacingly, but ultimately, she cracked first. After another tense moment, a smile began twitching at her lips. He sort of snorted, and then she choked out a laugh and set down the mug.

"Okay," she said grudgingly after her giggles subsided. "That sounded much better in my head. But I'm still mad at you." She fell heavily back into her chair. "I'm not made of porcelain, Doctor. We used to fight all the time. If we had neighbors, they could have set their VCRs or whatever by it." She looked up at him imploringly. "What's changed?"

He sighed. His long fringe, still mussed after sleep, flopped in his face as he slumped, and something tightened in Rose's chest. She didn't want to hurt him, but fighting – regular fighting, over who drank the last of the milk and put the bottle back, over smuggling alien artefacts out of their place of employment – wasn't about hurting each other. It was a healthy outlet of those myriad emotions that can't help being stirred when two sentient beings shared a space. Not everyone fought, of course, and not everyone had to – but Rose and the Doctor did. It was an unmalleable truth of not just one, but every universe in existence.

He crossed back to where she sat and knelt in front of her. "I've changed, Rose. This…" he waved his hand around the breakfast nook. "It's not the TARDIS. It's our house. It's nine-fifty on a Saturday morning, and I'm so _aware_ of it. There was never any Saturday in the TARDIS, never nine-fifty in the morning. It was tea time or laundry time or dethrone the despot time, but never nine-fifty." He heaved another deep breath and let his head rest against Rose's knee. She stroked his mussed hair and kept silent.

"Thing is, I knew we didn't have forever. I knew that better than you. Better than any of you humans, with your promises and your happily-ever-afters. But we had time. I had a machine that could travel in space and time and take you to the edge of an exploding supernova. I was never going to leave you behind, and you were never going to leave me. Now, I… I don't know."

Rose shook her head. So that's what he was worried about. She felt her anger draining away as she continued to run her fingers through his hair. "Doctor, I shot myself through countless dimensions to find you, not just for the whole of creation but for myself. You and me, we got a chance we shouldn't have. We had amazing adventures together… and then we got a house. Together." She wished she could explain herself better. Getting the house had been an adventure in itself, and their life together now was far from dull. She hoped he knew what she meant. "This was the one impossible thing, even for you. I'm not going to leave you behind because you always put the empty milk bottle back in the fridge."

He jerked his head up to meet her eyes. "Oi! Do not!" His eyes dropped and studied her slippers. "Not always."

She nodded emphatically. "Do so. Always. I'm keeping track."

He rolled his eyes, but the expression passed briefly over his face. "Not even when I ask you to break the law to smuggle me a device known to have caused the destruction of at least three cities… and one picturesque hamlet?" His blinked his wide, brown eyes at her, the very picture of innocence – but beneath his habitual silliness was a thread of fear. He wasn't kidding, not entirely.

"I take it you've never been shot through a dimensional canon. It's hell on the knees. Scuffed up a very nice pair of boots, too, trudging through all those whens and wheres." She smiled down at him. This time, it was genuine.

He took hold of her hand, stroked it gently with his thumb, then kissed it. After a long, silent moment passed between them, he stood and stretched out a hand. She took it, and he pulled her up into a crushing hug.

"Now then," he said, slightly muffled by her hair in his face, "about that discombobulater. It's pronounced Tradi-_chan_. Could you have it by Wednesday?"

(AN: Yes, I know I misspelled "cannon". I've had a wicked urge to do so since I finally saw Journey's End and read some fic. Sorry for the distraction.)


	2. Conversation 2

Five Conversations the Doctor and Rose Had (And One They Didn't)

Author: TravelerOfTheWays

Rating: T/PG-13

Spoilers: Journey's End

Summary: Cohabitating a cozy house in Chelsea isn't quite the same as cohabitating a TARDIS. As they adjust to an old/new Doctor, linear time and wallpaper, there are a few things Rose and the Doctor need to discuss.

**Conversation #2**

Rose wanted to scream. It felt marvelous and agonizing at the same time, but the more he did it, the more agonizing gained over marvelous until she was near tears. And he wasn't anywhere near stopping, she knew. The Doctor thought he was just so clever, and besides being a perfectionist, he was really a devoted lover. Most of the time, Rose hugely admired these traits, but if he kept on doing _this_, she would end up ripping his hair out.

"Doctor!" she gasped. He glanced up, hair damp with sweat and other fluids, face glowing with pure joy. She hated herself for what was about to say. It would wipe that silly, sexy grin right off his face, but she had to save herself. "Um… could you not do that?"

He just stared at her. No one in that particular position had ever looked at her with quite that expression before, happiness slowly fading into bewilderment. She winced.

"What do you mean, not do that? Rose, do you have any idea how many nerves are bundled right inside that little thing?" To emphasize his point, he ducked down to bump that point ever so gently with his nose.

She sucked in a breath between clenched teeth and jerked back reflexively. His head jerked up, shock and growing hurt writ clear across that face she loved so well. "I'm sorry!" she squeaked, not quite sure why she should be apologizing for her involuntary reactions to certain stimuli. "It's just… yeah, I know how many nerves are there. A lot. And every one of them is screaming right now."

His eyebrows shot up his forehead. He rolled over her outstretched leg to grab his glasses off the nightstand, then he rolled back and peered at her pelvis. Normally, Rose found those blocky glasses of his infinitely endearing and strangely sexy, but in that position, he looked more like a gynecologist than anything. Speculuums were the last thing she wanted to think about right now.

"What are you doing?" she asked, voice still a little too high.

"Well, there's only one explanation for you to be in pain after _that_," he explained, using the slightly patronizing voice he used when he was explaining Nextian geometry or why ducks' quacks don't seem to echo. She shifted around, uncomfortable under this close scrutiny, and began to get annoyed with him. Thought he gave such great head, did he? "Clearly, something's wrong down here. Don't worry, though, I'll just poke around a bit, and see what there is to see."

"Doctor!" she shouted as she scooted into a half-sitting position. "You are not _poking around_, and there's nothing wrong with me!"

He studied her through his glasses. "You sure?" As he spoke, he leaned down a little to take one last glance, and just as he was reaching out a finger to poke around as threatened, she kicked him none-too-lightly with her knee.

"Course I'm sure!"

"Guess you'd know," he said with a sort of shrug. "But that's the only possible reason that you are not in the throes of ecstasy at this very moment. I can literally think of no other possible explanation in the universe why you are not currently experiencing the best orgasm of your life."

She gaped at him. Bit full of himself, wasn't he? "Now listen, you, just because Martha liked that-"

"Oy!" he shouted.

"- doesn't mean other women do!" She ignored his outburst. She knew very well he'd never done this with Martha, but she had a point to make, and make it she would. "Okay, I mean, maybe lots of other women do, but I don't!"

He glanced down again, then looked back up at her and bit his bottom lip. God, she melted when he did that. It was a new thing for this Doctor, biting his lip, and she silently rejoiced that he had not yet realized how sexy that little gesture was. Soon as he did, he'd be biting his lip left and right, waggling those eyebrows at her. Now that he was in a quasi-human body, free of the last lingering strictures of Time Lord society, he had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the dazzling world of sex with Rose Tyler. Sometimes there really was throwing involved.

"You don't?" he asked quietly. "But I worked it out. The amount of pressure and lubrication and the precise movements needed to excite those nerves to the perfect level of stimulation."

She pulled herself upright and leaned forward to pluck the glasses from his face. "No, I don't. The numbers lied. It _hurts_. If you do it again, I'll probably end up kicking you in the face or something." She shook her head. "I don't want to do that. You have quite a nice face." She cupped her hand around his jaw and stroked his cheek with her thumb.

"Do I?" She didn't think she'd ever seen an adult male with eyes that went as wide and pleading as his. They made her feel like she was his whole world, everything he could see and everything he ever wanted to.

"Yeah," she whispered. She shifted and straightened her legs so she was lying on her front, propped up on her elbows. "The only face for me." Smiling, she drew him close and kissed him deeply. A damp, salty taste and aroma hung heavily around him, testament to his ardent efforts to please her.

After a long moment and quiet moans which gained in intensity as the kiss heated, the Doctor suddenly pulled away and bounded to his feet. Rose blinked several times and tried to regain her equilibrium. She was still a bit disoriented when he returned from the closet with a package a bit smaller than a shoebox. In it lay a device about the size of Rose's thumb, shaped like egg, and beside the egg, what appeared to be a small remote control.

She gasped. "Doctor!" He gave her wickedest grin.

... ... ...

Over the next week, Torchwood employees kept their eyes out for that mysterious, seemingly invisible creature which persistently bit Rose Tyler but ignored everyone else. Whatever it was, its bite made her gasp and flush, and then she would disappear to the loo for several minutes at time to thoroughly clean the site of the wound. They wanted to test her for toxins, in case it was alien, but she adamantly refused, so they just got used to her breathy little sounds and shook their heads pityingly.

It didn't last too long, though. Whatever its origins, the little bug disappeared after two weeks or so. For days afterward, Rose could be heard muttering about batteries and shooting dark glances at the Doctor. People shrugged and continued about their business. Rose Tyler had always been a good operative, one of their best, but she'd gone a bit weird, ever since that not-quite-human man in the blue suit showed up.


	3. Conversation 3

**Conversation #3**

Rose wanted to scream. She'd bribed Cordelia, the head of Torchwood Two, to arrange the Doctor's schedule so that he would be home today, probably trying to produce his orime, a hybrid between an orange and a lime, instead of accompanying them on their mission. So far, the orime was just a branch of limes grafted on an orange tree, but he was hopeful. Cordelia had tried to explain once how Torchwood existed in the universe where the Doctor had not existed until recently, but Rose had stopped following when paradoxes entered into the explanation. Then _he_ had tried to explain it again, using his limes as props, and she thought she grasped it, in that vague way she understood things when she didn't think too hard about them.

Cordelia had held up her end of the bargain, for which Rose promised to trudge through a month's worth of build-up paperwork, but that stupid Mohindar just couldn't keep his mouth shut, going on about all the poison darts and crossbows he would be bringing on their expedition to track the Veshian. He'd even asked the Doctor about his favorite alien tranquilizer, ignoring Rose's frantic gestures that he _shut up right this instant_.

At home, she had tried to downplay the expedition to the Doctor, making it out like they did this sort of thing all the time and would probably have the whole thing wrapped up in a quarter of an hour and wasn't it prime growing season for oranges right now? She thought he had taken the bait when he started babbling about DNA and RNA and other assorted letters, but here he was, armed with his cobbled-together sonic screwdriver and a pail containing a sloshing, foul-smelling goo.

"Brilliant!" Mohindar exclaimed when the Doctor showed up, pail upraised in one hand like an offering. "Is this it, then? The Deluxe Three C Captivator?" He rubbed his hands together and gazed intently at the pail.

"Yep!" the Doctor replied happily, "seasoned just this morning with a dead herring. It's the third C, you know, in the original Entinese. The effects of dead herring on alien physiology is quite amazing. It-"

"Doctor!" Rose interrupted. "Is that a rotting fish you're carrying around? In my office??" She glared.

"Er, well…" He cast a sidelong glance at Mohindar, but no help was to come from that quarter. The other man backed away slowly, hands help up in the air in a gesture of surrender.

"Mate, you're on your own here. Rose has a thing about her office. Last time I brought in a leaky alien brain, she…" His mahogany skin turned ashen as his voice trailed off. "Right. I'll be out. Somewhere else."

The Doctor put on his winningest face and widened his eyes. "Rose, it's just _part_ of a herring, and it's not rotting." He took a peek into the pail. "Much."

For half a second, she considered scolding him for the herring; she could be a right bitch on the subject of her office, too, as Mohindar knew all too well. But she changed her mind and came around to perch at the edge of her desk. "The herring's fine," she said with a sigh.

He brightened.

"Well, it's not, but… just leave it with Mohindar on your way out. I'll see you at home, yeah?" She forced her voice to stay light and prayed that he would catch on. _Please don't make me explain_, she thought fervently. _Please. I can't do this, not here._

The smile slid from his face. "Leave it with…?" His eyebrows were furrowed beneath his glasses. "But I'm coming with you." He sat down beside her and prodded her gently with his elbow. "You can't keep all the fun for yourself, Rose. I haven't seen a Veshian in ages, and I've never tried homemade Deluxe Triple C Captivator before. I really think I nailed it with the dead herring."

Rose winced. "Listen, you're still adjusting to this place…" She nodded. "To your new body and everything. Why don't you sit this one out, and we'll tell you all about it when we're done?" Her attempt at cheeriness faded quickly under his puzzled expression.

"Are you saying," he began slowly, "that you don't want me to come along? Is it the sonic screwdriver? I've only programmed a thousand of its functions so far, but I've got all the basics."

She shook her head. "No, it's not that. It's…" She cast about, creating and rejecting a dozen lies in her head, trying to think of anything, _anything_, that would keep him here. But looking at his downcast face, brown just peeping out under his lowered eyelids, her brain failed her, and her heart foundered. She steeled her voice and looked away. "I just, I don't want you to go, okay? Nothing personal. But you're new here, and we don't take rookies out on missions."

He blinked. "Rookies?" He barked a half-hearted laugh. "Rose, I'm the one who first took you alien-tracking. I'm pretty sure I haven't been a rookie for, oooh, seven hundred years or so."

She tangled her fingers in a knot on her lap and avoided meeting his eyes. "But we have procedure here, Doctor. Rules. You remember them?"

His laugh was shocked this time, incredulous. "Rose Tyler is lecturing me about rules? Guess we really are in a parallel universe." Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him waiting expectantly for her to respond to his quip. "Come on, really, what is it? You can tell me anything, you know that."

"You're not going, and that's final," she muttered. She got up to leave, to return to her desk, but he caught her by the wrist.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were being stupid," he said. She opened her mouth to protest angrily, but he continued. "But I do know better. Rose, you've been doing this ever since I started working with Torchwood." He grimaced, like the words had a bad taste. She had convinced him it was for the good of humanity, but the very name set off a bad series of recollections for both of them. "I can't do much good from the sidelines. That's not who I am."

She tugged her hand, but he held tight. "What more do you want me to say? You're not going." She bit off each word and tugged again. "Now go home, I have work to do."

He shook his head. "I'm not leaving here until you tell me what's wrong!" Anyone else would have wilted beneath that iron gaze, but Rose had been on the receiving end of it too many times. To the contrary, it just incited her to fight back.

"Oh, so now you stay?!" she exclaimed. "Can't get you to talk about anything for ages, and suddenly you won't let go?"

"That's right, I was wrong!" His eyes were blazing. "You were right, I was wrong. Yeah, I was scared, but you helped me through it, Rose. Now _please _let me do the same for you!"

She could have gone on shouting for ages, but his unrelenting compassion broke her. The man wielded his decency like a weapon, sometimes. Worst of all, he was right, and they both knew it. "There's nothing you can do." Her voice cracked. "It's bad enough around the house. I see you holding a chef's knife, and it's all I can do not to run in and snatch it away. You're all out of regenerations, Doctor. The aging I can handle because it's far away, but…" She shook her head, defeated.

He laid a warm hand on her shoulder. "Rose," he said gently. "Rose, look at me."

Reluctantly, she turned her head up. The expression on his face almost broke her heart, so brimming was it with understanding and sympathy. "I know what you're feeling." He took his hand from her shoulder and stroked her hair. She bit her lip to keep from crying. "You humans live like mayflies, all buzzing and zipping around and a lot of talk about mating. You buzz and you zip… and then you're gone. No matter how many people I've saved, I can never forget how many have also died because of what I've done. Their faces, their names, all up here." With his other hand, he tapped his temple.

"How do you do it?" she whispered. "I can't even take you on a routine tracking mission without envisioning your body, torn and bleeding…" Her voice didn't just crack, it shattered into a million pieces as silent tears coursed down her face. "It's all we have, this one chance."

"And you're going to leave me at home with the cleaning?"

She looked up and through her tears saw a faint grin dancing around the corners of his lips. "Not you," she muttered, "last time you did the wash, everything came out pink. Don't know how you did that; there wasn't any red in the pile." She sighed. "I know, I know. Last time, you were trying to protect me from all the bad things, and now I'm doing the same to you. Am I a filthy hypocrite or what?"

He grinned lopsidedly. "Course you're not." He paused. "Well, maybe a little."

"Just a bit."

"But hardly at all."

She mustered up a smile of her own, and he beamed. "There we are!" A long, silent look passed between them. "You're my savior, Rose," he said softly. "I was right to leave me with you. All that buzzing and zipping when I regenerated, it would have ripped me apart inside if not for you."

She turned her head slightly to kiss the palm of his hand. "All right, fine," she relented. How was she supposed to argue with someone who called her his savior? It wasn't fair fighting. "But you have to be _careful_, okay?" She scooted over a bit and wrapped her arms around his waist, then buried her face in chest. "Because you're _my_ mayfly, and I want you zipping and buzzing around until you're a shriveled old man. You got that?"

"Yes ma'am," he said softly into her hair.

They snuggled for a moment. Then Rose lifted her head away and sniffed the air. "Guess you can come along, as long as you get that rotting fish out of my office, _now._"

He jumped down and grabbed the pail by its hand. "Aye-aye!" he chirped, flashing a crisp salute. He was gone in a second, leaving Rose to sigh and shake her head and wipe the dampness from her cheeks. If he died out there, she promised silently, she was going to _kill_ him.


	4. Conversation 4

**Conversation #4**

Rose was sure that part of him wanted to scream. He was handling it well, though, gazing intently at the little square of paper and tapping his biro against the table. She had seen him there half an hour ago, chin in hand, and here he still was, staring at the thing like it held the secrets of the universe. Or like he watching his doom. She had resisted ruffling his hair this long, but finally, on her fourth pass round the table, she gave in and combed his fluffy brown hair with her fingers.

"What is it?" she asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. She bent down to murmur into his ear. "Are you going to marry it? Kill it? Poke it and see if it moves?"

"It's a badge," he said solemnly. "Like you have. With your name and things."

She straightened up and peered over his head. So it was, a Torchwood badge like the rest of them had clipped to their jackets. "What, for you?" That was a strange thought, the Doctor with a pass. She had the feeling he didn't believe in them.

He nodded and sighed. "They wouldn't let me in to see you." His voice was barely a whisper.

So that was the reason he was contemplating the badge. She had been unconscious during the episode that had hurt him so deeply, stuck in a hospital bed with a minor concussion. When she had awakened, he was there, clutching her hand, but his eyes were red-rimmed.

"_What's the matter?" she asked groggily. "I feel fine, really I do. Just a bit…" She raised her free hand and gingerly probed the back of her skull. "Ow. A bit sore. Ask me how many fingers you're holding up. Go on, I know I'll get it right." Her smile faded under the anguished look on his face._

"_They wouldn't let me in," he said hoarsely. "The nurses and the guards… I didn't have any identification, they said. So I couldn't come in." He dropped his head to rest beside their joined hands. "I had to wait for Cordelia to arrive. She let me in, and you were still asleep, but…"_

"_Hush," she said quietly. "You're here now. My Doctor." He glanced up, and she smiled. With her free hand, she wiped the lingering dampness from his cheeks and drew him close._

She dropped a kiss on his temple. "So what're you going to be, then? 'The Doctor'?" Her lips twitched in a smile. "I'd like to see that. 'The Doctor – Torchwood.'"

"Nah, that might not go over well at the hospital. Might be a little confusing." She was glad to hear a touch of lightness in his voice again. "Probably go with 'John Smith'. It's the name I use when you humans demand something with a surname."

She laughed. "It's so generic, though, isn't it? Bit bland. John Smith. Bet there are thousands of those running around London."

He turned to look up at her with a wounded look on his face. "Oi, watch it! I happen to like that name."

She giggled. "Better than 'Ford Prefect,' I suppose, as far as alien names go. Go on then, Mr. Smith, I…" Her voice faded as a horrifying thought struck her. The blood drained from her face.

"Rose, what's wrong?" He peered closely at her.

She grabbed the top of his chair for support. "Doctor, you know what that means, don't you?"

He looked at her blankly.

"Well, you know how Mum's always hinting around about… making things official…. you know?"

He nodded slowly, still not catching her meaning. She swallowed and took a deep breath. "And it's traditional, er, for women to… when they make things official, if they want to…"

His eyes popped. "Oh right, I hadn't quite… oh you're right."

"Mrs. Smith," she breathed. "Oh God. He was a good bloke, and Mum quite liked him after she realized he hadn't murdered me, but…" She shook her head.

They were silent for a moment, lost in contemplation. "Well," the Doctor finally said, "Do you want to? Make it official, I mean?"

She stared. "Er. Dunno."

He frowned. "What do you mean, you don't know?" He looked so confused that Rose had to laugh.

"We're a bit rubbish at this, aren't we?" She grinned. "That might be the worst proposal ever, Doctor. Course I want to. I mean… but you need paperwork, and I know how you feel about forms. It'd be more than just a badge." She pulled a nearby chair over and sat down as close to him as she could. Leaning in close, she stroked his cheek with her thumb. "What I mean is, I don't need any of that. _We_ don't need any of that. It's all Mum's daft idea, anyway. She just wants to see me in a froofy gown."

He smiled. "I wouldn't mind seeing you in a froofy gown myself."

Rose's grin turned wicked. "Bet you'd be more interested in the taking-off part, after. Imagine it. We could take a whole month and do nothing but shag until we dropped dead of exhaustion." Her fingers danced around his collar, plucking at his top button.

Abruptly, he stood and tugged her up beside him. "Dunno about a month," he declared, glancing at his watch. Without a further word of warning, he wrapped one arm around her back, bent down, and swept her into his arms. "We got thirteen hours until the morning shift. Do you wager we could drop dead of exhaustion in thirteen hours?"

Rose giggled. "Only one way to find out." Skinny as he was, the Doctor had a surprising, wiry strength. She'd been treated to this before.

"As you command, Mrs. Smith."

She swatted him. "Clark! How about 'Clark'? Or 'Baker'?"

"I rather like the sound of 'Smith'. Good morning, Mrs. Smith. Lovely day, isn't it? Why yes, Mrs. Smith, I'd love a bit of toast."

She kicked futilely. "Watch it, mister, I'll give you a bit of toast!"

"Oooh, is that what they're calling it these days?"

He deposited her unceremoniously on the bed, but after he went to shut the bedroom door, he turned to find her standing behind him with a gleeful look in her eyes and one of his ties in her hands. "Now then," she purred, "I believe we were… negotiating?"


	5. Conversation 5

Five Conversations the Doctor and Rose Had (And One They Didn't)

Author: TravelerOfTheWays

Rating: T/PG-13

Spoilers: Journey's End

Summary: Cohabitating a cozy house in Chelsea isn't quite the same as cohabitating a TARDIS. As they adjust to an old/new Doctor, linear time and wallpaper, there are a few things Rose and the Doctor need to discuss.

Disclaimer: Not mine, and I'm not making any money. Just the joy of playing in the sandbox.

Author's Note: Huge ginormous apologies to all. Right as I was gearing up to write Conversation #5, something very sad happened and totally extinguished my muse for awhile. And then school started up again. Well, enough of the excuses, here are the final two parts!

**Conversation #5**

Rose wanted to cry.

She had come home one too many times to find the Doctor staring vaguely off into the distance, whatever he might be holding in his hand dangling loosely from his fingers. He would jump about a million miles when she touched him or said his name, look lost for a moment, and then revert back to his usual upbeat self. Too many times she woke up in the middle of the night in the bed they shared to see him propped up one elbow, staring out the window into the starry night sky.

He wasn't consciously hiding anything from her, she knew. They had talked about that one. If he knew that something was wrong, he couldn't say what it was, and she was not even sure that he was aware of the changes in his behavior. Though he had settled on working for Torchwood as a consultant, he pushed himself harder than any full-time employee, spending as much time as he could with aliens and alien artefacts and losing himself in hypotheses and calculations. At one time, Rose had found herself more and more often understanding the wild theories he jabbered on about, but now it was like his mind was working at ten times its usual speed.

And his body was suffering for it. He'd never had much meat on his bones, but now his knees and elbows and collarbones stuck out sharply from his limbs, and when Rose touched him, she thought she could feel a strange heat burning beneath his pale skin. He ate as much as he ever had, but it seemed to melt away from him.

She could not have pinpointed the date when this had started, but a few months after she had started pressing extra helpings of dessert on him, she noticed that the atmosphere in their little house was changing by increments. Between his manic bursts of activity and spells of inward speculation, he wasn't smiling as much. She had loved his smile from the very beginning, even before he looked the way he did now. It could break so unexpectedly upon that face, like a new star in the night sky, warming her down to her toes.

Losing that silly grin was bad enough, but it was worse when he stopped licking things, stopped telling stories in funny voices, stopped taking her hand for no reason. He was never cool to her, exactly, because whatever else was changing inside him, he still loved her, but now that he wasn't laughing, she wasn't either.

She made a decision.

One day, he came home from work to find her, with a resolute cast to her jaw, unceremoniously stuffing socks into a small suitcase. So intent was she upon her task and upon keeping her face composed, that she did not hear him enter the house. She had counted out seven pairs of socks and was hovering over his sock drawer, wondering if she should pack any more of them. It was such a little thing, another pair or two of socks, but the enormity of what she was doing struck her like a hard slap when she reached in for another pair, and she fell, weeping, on to their bed.

He rushed inside then, sparing half a glance for the half-filled suitcase lying open beside her. For all that he had changed recently, his first instinct was to wrap Rose in his arms, and for that she was dimly grateful through her grief. He held her silently as her body shook with grief, and when she finally stilled, he brushed her hair back behind her ears and gave her a quizzical look.

"What is it?" he asked, "What's wrong?" She sniffled as he glanced around the room. His eyes widened, and she thought she saw a note of fear creep into his expression. "Rose, what is all this?"

Another sniffle, and she judged that her voice wouldn't crack too much when she spoke. "It's not what it looks like," she began. Her voice wavered, but she forced herself to continue. "It's for you. I…" Her chest heaved again, and she buried her face in his shoulder.

"Whatever it is," he said as he stroked her hair, "I'll fix it, Rose. I promise. Just tell me what's wrong, like you always do." His voice sounded muffled to her ears.

Taking hold of herself once again, Rose looked up at his thin, earnest face. "That's the thing, Doctor. I don't know what's wrong." She nodded toward the suitcase she had been filling and then glanced away quickly. She knew that she was doing the right thing, but the very sight of that valise hurt her. "You're not the same anymore. Half the time you're working like a maniac, staying all night at the office, and the other half of the time it's like you're not even in your body. Like you're far away or…" She felt her voice crack. "Or like you wish you were."

A multitude of emotions passed over his face, too numerous and too fleeting for her to identify them. "Rose, I…" He stopped and shook his head, as if clearing it. "I'm just… it's Donna and it's one heart and it's one world, and... I'm adjusting." His eyes were wide and entreating. "It-it'll get better, I promise."

Rose wanted nothing more than to believe him, but she recognized that tone, though it was one she'd never before heard from him. He was trying to convince himself just as much as her, and he was failing badly. She shook her head. "Not here, it won't. You've been trying too hard, and I can't watch it anymore." Her voice held steady as tears streamed down her face. "You have to go. To… to find something. To find yourself, maybe."

She took a deep breath. "And I can't be a part of it. You have to do this for you, you understand?" She reached across the bed and dragged the suitcase over the duvet. "Take it," she whispered. "Please."

He shook his head stubbornly. "I'm not leaving you, Rose. After the Time War, I was… I was hollow. I was so empty, and then I took your hand." A wisp of the smile she loved ghosted across his face. "And it fit."

A choked laugh bubbled out of her. "Yeah, it did. And then you blew up my job."

As the smile faded from his face, he took her hand and clutched it. "I only have one heart now, Rose." He gripped so hard her fingers ached. "If it breaks, I'll have nothing left."

She grabbed his collar with her free hand, pulled him close, and squeezed him tightly. "I'll keep it safe," she whispered. "But you have to go. If you stay, it'll just crumble, one piece at a time."

They stayed that way for a long time, holding on to one another for dear life. She couldn't have said whether minutes or hours passed, but suddenly they were standing at the door. His eyes were wet and rimmed with red, as she was sure hers were. Somebody grasped somebody, and his lips were on hers, bruising and tinged with salt.

She tore away and crumpled to the ground, huddling against the lintel as sobs wracked her body. She didn't hear or see him leave, and when she looked up again, he was gone. Her hand fell from where it was wrapped around her shoulder, to land on a chunk of something angular and crystalline. Something in the faint glow it emitted, despite the shadows that were falling around her, tickled at her memory. She stuck it in her pocket and stared into the distance.

He was out there somewhere, and he was so fragile. She been right to send him away, but at that moment, she hated herself for it.


	6. And The One They Didn't

Five Conversations the Doctor and Rose Had (And One They Didn't)

Author: TravelerOfTheWays

Rating: T/PG-13

Spoilers: Journey's End

Summary: Cohabitating a cozy house in Chelsea isn't quite the same as cohabitating a TARDIS. As they adjust to an old/new Doctor, linear time and wallpaper, there are a few things Rose and the Doctor need to discuss.

**And One They Didn't**

"I can't believe you did this to me!"

"Me?! You're the one who brought me to this filthy hell hole! I'm stuck here, and I have literally no way of going home again. Do you think I like it here? God, if I could the last year back, I would!"

"You're not the only one! I can't believe the time I wasted with you, thinking something special was going to happen. It never did! You don't do anything. You bum around, never got a job, and you think you're being all deep. At least I've built a life for myself here! You won't even try to make anything."

"A life? You call this a life?! My brain hasn't actually produced a single thought since I've been here! I'm about to go complete screaming mad, and you're just happy to set up your little house in your little life. And it's nothing!"

"If it's nothing, then why don't you just go?! Leave, and never come back!"

"That's the first intelligent thing you've said in months! Your wish is my command. I'll get my things, and you won't ever need to set eyes on me again."

"Brilliant!"

Rose looked over at the Doctor with a small smile on her face. He grinned and squeezed her hand.

"Rose, I can promise you that I will never call our lovely flat a hell hole. It's quite nice" He craned his head to glance around the room. "I've never had curtains before. They're very homey."

She laughed. "What, do you mean domestic?" Her lips quirked as she gave him a sly look. "Thought you didn't do domestic."

"Well, maybe I was feeling a mite grumpy when I said that."

Rose's eyebrows raised in feigned shock. "What, you? Grumpy? Can't imagine it. All sunshine and rainbows, you were. Go on, grumpy?" Before he had time to do much more than give her a lock of mock annoyance, she had clambered across the divan. "Well, give us a smile then."

He crossed his arms and pretend to pout. "Maybe I don't want to. Maybe I'm grumpy again. What are you gonna do now, make fun of my ears?"

She leaned forward and flicked his earlobes with her fingertips. "I just might do." His lips twitched, but he kept a straight face. "Ooh, Mr. Serious, are we?" Her fingers slipped down to his sides and tickled him through his suit. He bit his lips, and he soon broke down before Rose's renowned tickling technique.

"Watch it, blondie!" he warned. When she did not stop, he made his final threat. "Right, that's it. You can't just tickle the Oncoming Storm with impunity, you know." He launched a counter tickle attack, and soon they were laughing helplessly, gasping for breath as the film they'd been watching on television continued unnoticed.

As they paused to catch their breath, before launching into another round, their heads turned briefly to regard the television. The woman was throwing the man's suitcase out the door, screaming at him as he bellowed back.

Rose gave the Doctor a warm smile from where she was perched atop him. "That's never gonna be us, is it?"

When he returned his gaze from the television back to her face, glowing pink with exertion and delight, the intensity of his dark eyes took her breath away. "Rose, you can kick me out every Sunday after the football match, and I will always come back."

Something inside her melted. "Always?"

By way of reply, he took advantage of her momentary lapse in attention to reach under her shirt and dance his fingertips along her bare skin. She squealed and returned her attention to the devilish man trapped underneath her. They were going to be there for a very long time.

**Edit for clarity**: What I wrote did happen, in my writey-verse. The "conversation they didn't have" refers to the "That's never gonna be us" bit. Sorry that was so vaguely done.


End file.
